World News

By E&T news desk

Published Tuesday, September 18, 2012

A round-up of this month's engineering news from around the world with a regional focus on China.

16 August Maruti Suzuki said it would restart production at its north India factory after a deadly riot in July. A manager was killed and more than 100 people injured in the riot between workers and management at the 550,000 vehicle-a-year factory in Manesar. http://bit.ly/Qh75FX

16 August Work has resumed on the $3.5bn Xayaburi dam project across the Mekong River in Laos, its Thai Developer said. Laos agreed in December to suspend the controversial project and said on 13 July work had stopped. “We are still working on the project. We haven’t received a formal letter from the Lao government that we should suspend or put the project on hold,” said Plew Trivisvavet, chief executive officer at Ch Karnchang Pcl. http://bit.ly/NrBvIR

28 August Australia and the EU agreed to link their carbon trade schemes by 2018, allowing Australian firms to immediately buy cheaper EU carbon credits. Australia also is scrapping its planned A$15/tonne carbon floor price when its emissions trading scheme starts in July 2015. http://bit.ly/U7WaRv

28 August Apple sought a ban on the sale of eight Samsung phones, after winning a US court case against the South Korean company. A jury awarded Apple $1.05bn after finding that Samsung had wilfully copied the iPhone and iPad in creating and marketing the products. Samsung plans to appeal. The US judge asked Apple for a list of products it wants banned from the US market. http://bit.ly/U7WhMN

4 September EU regulators will approve plans by Vodafone, O2 and Everything Everywhere to set up a joint venture to allow users to make payments with their phones, a source following the deal said. The mobile wallet scheme, called Project Oscar, will allow customers to use their mobile for transactions instead of cash or cards. http://bit.ly/PmSoUb

5 September Battersea Power Station’s £8bn redevelopment would begin later this year, its new owners said. The power station and its recognisable concrete chimneys are to be regenerated to form the centre of a redevelopment of the 39-acre site. Preparatory work for the plan to build 3,500 homes, 1.7 million square feet of office space, shops and a park would begin later this year, with ground broken in the second half of the year, the Malaysian consortium behind the plans said. http://bit.ly/QnOr18

7 September South Africa lifted a moratorium on shale gas exploration, allowing the extraction technique of “fracking” in the semi-arid Karoo region. Collins Chabane, a minister in the President’s office, said the cabinet had decided to lift a moratorium, imposed in April last year, after a study eased safety concerns related to the controversial method. http://bit.ly/P1H4LA

11 September Pirate Bay co-founder Gottfrid Svartholm Warg was extradited to Sweden to begin a one-year jail term for breaching copyright laws. The 27-year-old Swede had been living in Cambodia after being convicted in 2009 of Internet piracy in Sweden. He was also being held by authorities as part of a separate hacking investigation. http://bit.ly/PbrE7i

11 September Everything Everywhere rebranded itself as EE and launched a new 4G LTE network, the first in the UK. The network, also named EE, will be launched in 16 UK cities by the end of the year, covering 20 million people, and offer 4G mobile and fibre broadband services. Nationwide roll-out will follow in 2013, with 98 per cent of the UK population covered by 2014. http://bit.ly/Qh4dZH